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Talk:Powerplaying Guide/@comment-45075715-20200220095345
For players who aren't so skilled as commanders or skilled at combat like me, I would suggest an alternative power-playing guide favoring the total combat beast. Feel free to put all your level up attribute points in STR and AGI, and your skill points in combat skills like ironflesh, power strike/draw/throw, shield, riding, horse archery and save the bulk of your qualis gems for DoT companion boosts instead of elixirs. Reserve a weak companion or two for party skills. Most people might say that this is not powerplaying so much as optimizing for the early game. That's true if the idea of powerplaying here is having a character build with the most number of skill points distributed all over the place to have 10 skill in almost everything late game. But I would argue that this build is still a form of late-game powerplaying in itself because of CKOs. Your character takes a backseat to CKO troops once they're sufficiently upgraded. If you use almost all your qualis gems (except for KO/CKO) on your companions on top of investing all your free attribute and skill points into combat attributes and skills, your character will have a much easier time winning Elacrai tourneys mid-late game without drinking any elixirs, a much easier time early game soloing and racking up XP/loot/renown, and most of all your companions will have epic weapon profs, attributes, and combat skills late game which means that as trainers for your CKO units, your CKO sergeants and knights will have ridiculous amounts of STR, AGI, combat skills, and weapon proficiencies. Then your CKO knights/sergeants will steamroll the entire map and even beat Noldor while heavily outnumbered. CKO troops are so, so, so OP if you train them with high-attribute, high-prof companions and equip them properly (fast melee weapons, good mounts, awesome armor, excellent bows and quivers). To get the most out of your CKO troops, you should reserve gems to make your companions as strong in combat as possible which will translate to making your CKO troops as strong in combat as possible. This was in an older version from a couple of years back and I can't see any diffs yet to change this but I managed to beat over 80 noldor with 15 CKO knights playing this way. I've also beaten dread legion armies of over 800 with only 50 CKO troops and in both cases with simple F1-F3 charge. I've also managed to succeed in siege defense and siege offense when outnumbered 50+-to-1 with almost no casualties using CKO troops. In siege offense they frequently ran out of arrows but the arrows did most of the work killing the strongest troops and the CKO troops were still so strong at melee with heavy armor and fast weapons that I was able to F1-F3 after they ran out of arrows and still win outnumbered 50+-to-1. Do not underestimate the power of CKO units if they're equipped and trained properly! They will actually make Noldor look like complete weaklings at some point. If you use qualis gems for elixirs on yourself while putting all spare attribute points in INT, you will still get high STR and AGI and weapon profs late game to survive Elacrai tourneys but your companions won't so much, and therefore your CKO troops also won't have so much STR, AGI, or weapon profs. That's weakening your CKO troops, and CKO troops are so powerful after sufficient investment late game that I would say this is arguably sub-optimal to favoring a combat beast build who can hold his own while reserving most of his qualis gems for companions as trainers for his CKO troops. It's also going to make the early game so much easier, and PoP is most brutal to the new character (especially if you aren't elite in terms of your commander/combat player skills like me).